The Heretic’s Wife (2 page)

A burst of affirmation and encouragement broke out among the men, then settled to a polite murmur, giving him time to consider. Monmouth walked away and engaged the other officers in conversation, his voice low.

What was there to consider? William was hardly able to stifle his exultation. A pox upon the Bishop of London! An image of Cuthbert Tunstall happening upon a Tyndale translation of the New Testament flashed through William’s mind. He imagined the bishop finding his translation at a bookshop in Paternoster Row, picking it up gingerly as though he were handling some noxious thing, opening it up with his ring-choked fingers—only to see Tyndale’s imprint. What he would give to be there to witness such a moment! Finally, the Bishop of London would see that the scholar he had snubbed had succeeded without him.
Pride goeth before a fall,
he reminded himself. It was enough that God had provided the way. God and Humphrey Monmouth.

Three days later, William Tyndale left for Germany. In his pocket he carried twenty pounds from the Hanseatic merchants of the London Steelyard, along with Erasmus’s Greek New Testament. He would use it and Luther’s German Bible to make his own English translation—not to further the humanist cause, not as an exercise in the classics for the “new learning” of the intellectual elite represented by Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, but to do for Englishmen what Luther had done for his countrymen. He’d allotted himself one year—six months to learn the German language and six months to make his English translations. In the land that did not burn Luther, he was sure to gain the freedom to print.

As he boarded ship in Bristol, he patted the pocket of his leather jerkin to feel the bulging outline of the Greek New Testament. When he returned he’d be carrying another in its place, and this one would be in English.

William had forgotten all about the Smithfield ghosts and their warnings.

M
ARCH 1528

Let it not make thee despair, neither yet discourage thee, O reader, that it is forbidden thee in pain of life and goods . . . to read the Word of thy soul’s health; . . . for if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes . . .

—F
ROM
W
ILLIAM
T
YNDALE’S
T
HE
O
BEDIENCE OF A
C
HRISTIAN
M
AN, 1528

A
scream reverberated against the walls of Gough’s Book and Print Shop and echoed down Paternoster Row. An ugly, devil-eyed rat scrambled inside the baited jar, clawing to get out. When no manly presence asserted itself, Kate Gough closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, grabbed the fire poker and brought it down with such force she almost lost her balance. The jar shattered. A streak of gray scuttled behind a large codex on the bottom shelf of the book cupboard.

Damnation! All she’d got for her trouble and fright was a glob of grease and ashes and a pile of broken glass on her floor. Where was a man when
you needed one—though Kate could boast no man in her life save her brother John, who had gone off to the Frankfurt Book Fair on some grand adventure. All two of her suitors, the miscreant son of a spice merchant and a journeyman thief, had slunk away when they learned she had no dowry and that the business belonged to her brother.

“Nasty, evil creatures,” Kate murmured—under her breath since there was no one to hear.

Even had she not encountered the marauder eyeball to eyeball, there was evidence aplenty of another invasion: ragged corners of leather bindings, chewed pages, loathsome black pellets on the deal boards of the bookshelf. The poker thudded to the floor, masking the creak of the door, but as she bent to pick up the largest shards of greasy glass, a sweep of cold rushed in.

“Just look around,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ll be with you shortly.”

She picked up the broom beside the hearth and swept the mess into a pile. “I’ve broken a bottle and wouldn’t want someone to step on the bits,” she called.

“Please, it’s urgent.” It was a woman’s voice.

Kate felt her hackles rise. How could the purchase of a book be urgent? “Shut the door, please, you’re letting in the cold. I’ll just be a minute more,” she repeated, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

“Please. I can’t wait. Just watch my baby. I’ll be back. Soon. I promise.” The woman’s voice was low and breathless, as though she were being chased.

Baby? She said she was leaving a baby!

Kate whirled around in time to see another streak of gray—this one larger and in skirts—darting out her door. “Wait! I—” But the woman was as fast as the rat had been. “Wait—come back!” she shouted to the skirt and shawl disappearing around the corner that led into St. Paul’s courtyard.

“By all the painted saints and the virgin too,” she muttered to herself, forgetting all about the rat and the shattered glass, forgetting about the broom in her hand as she looked incredulously at the bundle on the floor. It moved slightly inside the swaddling. How dare the woman! How presumptuous and careless and stupid to leave her child with a stranger! Kate didn’t know anything about caring for babies. The only person she’d ever taken care of was her dying mother and she’d not been very good at that.

What if the woman was lying? What if she didn’t come back for hours? Her next thought made her breath catch in her throat. What if she didn’t come back at all! She was probably one of the destitute women who loitered
around the steps of St. Paul’s, their eyes as hungry as the pigeons who pecked for food scraps left by the vendors on the dirty paving stones. The bundle writhed a bit and made a sucking noise. Why hadn’t the silly woman taken it to the almshouse or to the nuns at Black Friars? Why did she have to leave it here, for God’s sake?
Oh Holy Virgin, it is starting to cry.

“Shh, shh, don’t cry. Please, please don’t cry,” she begged. “It’s not good to cry, crying never helps,” as if the infant could be reasoned with.

Kate stood the broom beside the door and, kneeling on the floor, peered at the child. “You must not cry. It is not allowed,” she said, pulling back a faded, but clean, blanket to reveal a doll-like face and a rosebud mouth working itself into a scrunch of rage. One tiny, perfect hand broke free and pumped the air. The creature let out a thin, high screech, and then another, until its tiny body writhed in rhythm to its squalling.

She picked up the child gingerly and, cradling it in the crook of her arm, bounced it gently. To Kate’s surprise, the squalling dropped a pitch and paused intermittently. “There, there,” Kate crooned as she bounced and rocked the baby.

That was not so hard.

The crying stopped and the baby opened its eyes. They were the color of the Madonna’s robe in the old illuminated Bible she had inherited from her grandmother, a pure and perfect virgin blue. Kate paused in her bouncing. The blue eyes shut and the tiny mouth scrunched again. Kate resumed her bouncing and her crooning and the world righted itself. The infant—which Kate with her limited experience judged to be about two months—fastened a gaze on Kate’s face and smiled. Both the gaze and the smile seemed wise with some primal knowledge, as if to say, I know who you are and I pronounce you worthy. A gurgle followed the smile. Then another.

In that moment Kate’s heart grew about three sizes.

She was still holding the child, exchanging tentative endearments in some ancient language known only between women and babies, when the mother came back.

“So sorry. Thank you so much for watching my little Madeline.” She paused to catch her breath. “She was slowing me down. A cutpurse snatched my day’s wages, and I had to give chase.” She grinned and held up the thin little bag. Coins clinked inside it. “My name is Winifred. I’m a seamstress at the shop one street over and my mistress was out. I couldn’t leave the baby alone.”

“Madeline? That’s a beautiful name,” Kate said. All her anger at the
woman for abandoning the child on her floor had melted away. “She’s a beautiful child.”

“Her daddy is a Frenchy,” she said, by way of explanation for the name, or perhaps the good looks, judging by how her face lit up when she spoke of him.

The baby was still gurgling and Kate was still bouncing the child in the crook of her arm. She was momentarily distracted by the apparent fearlessness of the young woman, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen—Kate’s own age when the apprenticed printer with whom she’d exchanged only a few fumbling kisses was found with his hand in the bookshop coin box and sent away in disgrace. This girl already had a husband and a child and was chasing down cutpurses as though it were all in a day’s work.

The woman reached out her arms. “She likes you. She doesn’t usually take to strangers.”

“You are very brave—or very foolish,” Kate said, unconsciously drawing the child closer to her.

“Oh, ’twas just a lad. I boxed his ears and sent him home to his mama a little wiser. He was probably hungry, but I can’t afford to feed him. My man would be that unhappy if I came home empty-handed. He works as a waterman in Southwark. It takes every penny we can scrape together to feed the three of us. A lot of people on this side of the river won’t use him ’cause he’s a foreigner.” Her arms still outstretched, the woman moved a step closer. “I’ll take her now. I’ve imposed long enough.”

Kate reluctantly surrendered the little girl. “No imposition,” she murmured.

Winifred lifted the baby into her arms, buzzing her on the nose with her own. “You were Mama’s good girl, but now we have to go. Your pa will want his supper,” she said. She exited the shop in a rush and a swoop, almost as quickly as she had entered it, throwing a “much obliged, mistress” over her shoulder.

“Please, anytime,” Kate called to her retreating back. “No trouble. Really.”

She stood for a moment in the doorway, not feeling the rush of cold air, her arms remembering the weight of the child. The lamplighter was at work and the beadle had begun his watch. Soon it would be dark outside, the night stretching out before her. She would light her own lamp, read a bit from a recent translation of Dante that they had for sale, careful not to smudge the pages, of course. Then she would eat some stale bread and cheese, maybe a
bit of dried fruit. She did not cook much since her brother had married, been glad to be relieved of the burden these two years. Then she would bank the fire in the shop and go up the winding stair to her small bed—just big enough for one.

First she had to sweep up the broken glass. She picked up the broom, but just leaned on it, wondering what had changed; whence came this sudden sense of loneliness and dissatisfaction? She thought of the poor women who slept in the shadow of St. Paul’s in whatever doorway they could find shelter. You should thank God, Kate Gough, she scolded herself. You have a roof and hearth—and books. If you have an itch to hold a child, there’s always little Pipkin—and you can give him back. When would you have time for books if you had a brood of squalling children and a husband? But she didn’t feel thankful.

The girl—she said her name was Winifred. She would be home by now. She and her husband would eat their evening meal together and laugh about her catching the would-be thief. She might even tell her Frenchman about the bookseller who had watched her child.

Was she nice?
he might ask.
Nice enough. But there was something sad about her. It was almost as if she wanted to keep little Madeline for herself. I felt kind of sorry for her.

Little Madeline. Kate remembered the baby smell of her, the perfect little hand that clutched Kate’s finger as though it were a lifeline.

Stop it, Kate!

She whisked the broom more roughly than she meant to. A piece of glass scuttled across the floor and startled her, causing her to wonder if the red-eyed vermin would peer at her tonight when she blew out her candle.

Blinking back tears of frustration, she couldn’t help but wonder for the second time that day,
Where was a man when you needed one?